League of Legends 4.12 patch notes prep for World Championships

16 Jul 2014 by Paul Younger

League of Legends

RIOT are has posted the League of Legends 4.12 patch notes which takes a closer look at some of the Champions.

In the latest update notes from RIOT, they state that they are now focusing on the competitive scene to “ensure the landscape is diverse and healthy”. Part of the process to sort the game out before the League of Legends World Championships is to look at the heroes that are “almost there” such as Alistar or Ahri.

For either side (strong or weak champions), our main philosophy is to look for strengths to highlight while also emphasizing weaknesses. This ensures a champ can hold onto their strategic value while still having meaningful tradeoffs.

Details on their thinking behind changes to Alistar or Ahri are outlined in the patch notes.

“ We want to give Ali the things he needs to succeed but, like we did with Maokai, we also want to make sure he’s in a healthy position to do so. There’s a little concern that having 70% damage reduction at level 1 Unbreakable Will might make Alistar a little too good at tower diving (even as a support), but we’ll see how these changes affect him first.”

“Ahri’s a cool fox gal that we’d like to see more of, but she’s currently sitting just below the top-tier mid picks. That said, we don’t think she needs too many buffs to keep up, so we focused on her ability to push the wave more efficiently so she can find more opportunities to roam”

The patch also comes with updates to other Champions along with item tweaks to Grez’s Spectral Lantern and The Lightbringer which are now two separate item lines with different functionality.

The final note worth pointing out is the addition of Jungle Timers.

Jungle timers currently track the next spawn time of: enemy / team Elder Lizard, enemy / team Ancient Golem, Dragon, and Baron

Timers will only start tracking a camp if you or a teammate directly witness a monster camp being fully cleared (similar to minimap icons)

If you manage to snipe Baron or Dragon without vision, the timer will set itself off

You can access jungle timers by pressing TAB (default key) through the scoreboard. They’ll be at the top of the screen.